Pentagon policy to this day dictates that shielding a Guantánamo detainee's face from view -- blurring it, chopping him off at his beard, or in that instance, hidden beneath a cap, surgical mask and blindfold -- spares a captive humiliation banned by the Geneva Conventions.

''Did I ever misread what was in those photos,'' Clarke wrote. ``The problem wasn't that we released too much, it was that we explained too little . . . which allowed other critics to say we were forcing the detainees into poses of subjugation.''

The reaction was swift, and furious.

In England, The Mirror tabloid slapped the photo on its cover and questioned the post 9/11 alliance Prime Minister Tony Blair had forged with the United States with this screaming headline:

What the hell are you doing in OUR name, Mister Blair?

Recalls McCoy, sheepishly: ``I actually called my mother right after it happened and told her that my photos had caused an international incident.''

NOT UNREASONABLE

Lost in the furious reaction, said McCoy, was that detainees ``simply weren't kept like that.''

''They were wearing gloves because it was cold,'' he said. ``I mean, they were flying at 30,000 feet in an unheated back part of the plane; they were wearing hats for the same reason. They did say the goggles were blacked out so they couldn't communicate and plan to attack a guard. It made sense to me.''

U.S. military officials won't name the first 20 men who arrived at the base -- captured in the photo.

The Miami Herald tried unsuccessfully through lawyers and intermediaries to speak with some of the men in the photo who have been released.

One, Australian David Hicks, just completed a nine-month sentence as an al Qaeda foot soldier and is free in his hometown Adelaide -- but under a U.S. gag order that forbids him to talk about his treatment at Guantánamo.

POLICY CHANGE

Meantime, it is hard to pinpoint the moment when the pictures became so prevalent.

Soon after their release, the Pentagon took them off its own websites and labeled them ''For Official Use Only,'' to prevent further distribution.

Military escorts let civilian news photographers take pictures of detainees -- but only out of focus, from behind, or if they cropped a captive's face from the photo.

And Guantánamo commanders bemoan their use as anachronistic. The Pentagon's visitors tour now stops at the abandoned processing cage where escorts encourage picture-taking to show that weeds grow where Guantánamo detainees once knelt.

But over at the prison camps, they can't get the kind of intimacy that McCoy photographed that first day.

Ground rules dictate that journalists taking pictures submit them for censorship -- and destroy any that show a captive's face.

The Pentagon has also tried to discourage news organizations from using the photographs. But Carlebach says the military's efforts overlook the point of what makes a photo iconic.

Time moves on but the instant comes to tell a larger story. ``They're kneeling with that anti-personnel barbed wire in the foreground, and it does not describe bloody-thirsty jihadists. These guys are pathetic-looking in their bright orange pajamas.''

For those who want to see a captive bowed, it provides a certain satisfaction. For those who believe the policy swept up innocents, it tells another story.

TOO BUSY

McCoy never saw it either way. He was too busy.

He's now winding up a career that took him across the globe, and more recently saw him doing a desk job -- editing video commercials for All Hands magazine.

But, no, just in case anyone is wondering, he never got into trouble for making those pictures.

A few weeks later, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld toured the prison camp. 'I told him, `Hey, I'm sorry my photos caused all these problems.' ''

``He told me not to worry about it, I was doing my job. And that was about it.''